The Challenge
- Protect critical infrastructure from email threats
- Strengthen company culture around cyber risk
- Maximize efficiency for IT team
The Solution
Proofpoint Threat Protection (Email Security)
Proofpoint ZenGuide™ (formerly Proofpoint Security Awareness Training)
Proofpoint Email Fraud Defense (EFD)
The Results
- Proofpoint Threat Protection discovers and stops phishing and other risks
- Proofpoint ZenGuide empowers employees with proactive knowledge to stop threats
The Challenge
Keeping Industrial Processes and Data Safe
Linkforce was founded in 2007 as a small crew of shutdown specialists, and has steadily grown into a leading integrated maintenance, engineering and project services delivery business with locations throughout Australia. With a workforce of more than 2,800, a fleet of modern vehicles and advanced facilities, and deep industry expertise, Linkforce delivers positive outcomes for clients. Its customers span the mining, industrial, telecommunications and energy markets. The organization relies on a lean, agile team to keep its infrastructure running at its best.
Like other enterprise organizations, Linkforce strives to keep its infrastructure secure from constantly evolving cyberthreats. For years, the company has used Proofpoint Threat Protection for a multilayered defense against business email compromise (BEC), credential phishing, ransomware and account takeover. But the company also understands that people play an important role in minimizing risk. To further strengthen its security posture, Linkforce turned to its partner, Lumen IT.
Todd Bayley, enterprise architect, Linkforce
The Solution
Toward a Stronger Culture Around Cyber Risk
After evaluating several options, Linkforce decided to augment its Proofpoint solution with Proofpoint ZenGuide™. Designed to cultivate a culture of mindfulness, this educational program equips employees and other stakeholders with the knowledge and skills they need to identify, understand and mitigate cyberthreats.
With the implementation services from Lumen IT, Linkforce was able to execute a rapid, highly successful deployment. They chose Proofpoint ZenGuide because of its ability to smoothly complement their other Proofpoint solutions.
“Integrating ZenGuide with the rest of the Proofpoint stack, and the intelligence data from incoming emails, was what really sold it to us,” said Todd Bayley, enterprise architect at Linkforce.
Close collaboration between Lumen IT and their clients made the deployment smooth and set the stage for a rapid return on the investment.
“The ZenGuide deployment was one of the best we have done as the Linkforce team worked diligently and swiftly to stand up the platform and start regular training and phishing,” said the Lumen IT representative. “They needed to make a change to the cyberculture, and they have done this very well.”
The Linkforce team later attended a workshop on DMARC run by Lumen IT, and purchased Proofpoint Email Fraud Defense to assist with moving to P=Reject for ensuring authenticity of emails. Linkforce is also using Proofpoint Archive, a cloud-based archiving solution that simplifies legal discovery and end-user data access.
“Proofpoint Archive is primarily used for shared mailboxes,” said Todd. “We have a lot of very large shared mailboxes, so we try and keep them for a small amount of time, as well as for legal discovery, which we use it for quite regularly.”
The Results
Safer Email Communications and More Efficient IT
By making Proofpoint ZenGuide an key part of the Linkforce security strategy, the company has quickly unlocked substantial benefits. And it’s not only in minimizing security threats, but in improving users’ behavior.
“Proofpoint ZenGuide is pretty simple,” said Todd. “Every month we send out a new training to the entire company, and we’ve had a lot of people who have given very good feedback. I actually enjoy the ZenGuide training, and the phishing simulation that is part of our monthly cadence as well.”
“The results and engagement from training and phishing simulations shows that Linkforce is treating cyber resilience as a high priority and working to build strong capabilities across their entire workforce,” said the Lumen IT representative. “The training completion rates improved solidly following deployment. And more important, Lumen IT measured a drop in click rate for phishing.”
The Proofpoint solution is also playing a key role in helping the organization move forward on its DMARC compliance journey. Proofpoint Email Fraud Defense provides visibility, tools and experienced consultants to help Linkforce implement and manage its DMARC deployment.
Proofpoint Threat Protection is continuing to provide robust protection as well, capturing the latest threats while helping the IT team work more efficiently.
“We use Proofpoint Threat Response Auto-Pull (TRAP), which is included as part of the bundle,” said Todd. “One of the main benefits for us was that it was a big improvement for minimal extra cost. We’ll often come in in the morning and see that TRAP has removed something beforehand. In the past, the threat would have been sitting in people’s mailboxes until we remediated it, whereas with TRAP it’s already gone.”
Linkforce’s leadership is pleased with the latest deployments, and is looking forward to continuing to build on the platform. The company’s executive management team has endorsed the cyber awareness journey with Proofpoint and Lumen IT as key partners in the Linkforce ecosystem.
